Trauma is in the eye of the beholder

After the birth of her third child, Emma Davies found herself reflecting on how we frame traumatic experiences and whether we can sometimes impose this view at all costs without listening to lived experiences.

Over the last few years, I have found it interesting that others feel they can label a person’s experiences as traumatic and somehow have the power to make that decision from the outside. This has once again been at the forefront of my mind following the birth of my third child.

Managing expectations

Since his birth, I have had so many people tell me that it was traumatic, that we must have been terrified and that it must have been so scary.

To give my story some context, my third child was born at home but we were transferred to hospital less than an hour after his birth as his apgar scores were low and I was haemorrhaging. While I appreciate that this sounds scary to many, we knew there was a chance of this happening; my previous babies had been big (10lb 4oz and 9lb 14oz), my third was predicted to be even bigger and there were other risk factors too, but after the experience I’d had with the hospital birth of my first child, I chose to birth at home anyway. 

My third birth was intense, but it was peaceful and empowering, and he was born at home just as planned. What followed was certainly not how I wanted things to be. While I can honestly say I don’t feel traumatised by his birth, there are things which I wish had been different and there are parts of the experience which I feel sad about.

One of these is the fact that he didn’t get his golden hour of skin to skin. Initially after his birth, he came to me in the pool but his heart rate and temperature were low and, as they didn’t improve over time, he was taken by the midwife and she tried to warm him up. A short while later, an ambulance was called as his heartbeat and his temperature were still dipping and, despite the midwife doing everything she could do at home, they weren’t stabilising.

At this point, my baby was on the other side of the room being cared for by the only midwife present. During this time, I began to haemorrhage. Thankfully, a second midwife had now arrived and she took over caring for my son. I had hoped I would be able to have a physiological third stage but it became obvious that this wasn’t going to be a safe option. We had already discussed the possibility of needing to manage the third stage of labour due to the risks of haemorrhaging so I knew what to expect. I accepted that syntometrine and controlled cord traction would be the safest way to deal with this situation at home.

“We had already discussed the possibility of needing to manage the third stage of labour due to the risks of haemorrhaging so I knew what to expect”

Transferring to hospital

A short while later, as I was feeding my baby for the first time, the ambulance arrived and we transferred to hospital. My baby stayed skin to skin on the way and continued to feed as we went round to HDU.

There were a few moments once we arrived that led me to realise how serious the situation was; these included the doctor telling  all the other staff in the room to stop doing anything until they could fit a working cannula in case manual management didn’t work and we needed to go to theatre. My baby was being taken care of by my husband and the doctors at this point and was then placed under the lights to warm him up.

Although the manual management of my haemorrhage was unpleasant, triggering and quite painful, my consent was gained at every stage and I was aware of why the procedures were necessary. Within a couple of hours of us arriving at the hospital, my situation had stabilised and my baby’s temperature and heart rate had improved. We were left under observation for 24 hours and I hoped we could then return home.

Confidence in my decisions

While a lot of this was not what I had hoped my birth would be, I do not regret the decisions I took and I feel our experience was overwhelmingly positive. The care we were given both antenatally and postnatally from our named midwife could not have been better and she empowered me to make informed decisions throughout my pregnancy. The midwives who cared for us at home listened to my wishes and allowed me the space and safety to birth my baby. The midwives and doctors who we encountered at the hospital made me feel at ease, and were compassionate and caring at all times.

I honestly believe that these people and the care they provided is the reason I came out of this birth experience feeling positive. Their care was the polar opposite of the care we received during my first birth in the same hospital where I was bullied, belittled, assaulted and treated as though my consent did not matter, ending in a forceps delivery and an episiotomy which I did not consent to.

Even six years on, this birth experience is the one I would describe as traumatic and is the one from which I have spent years trying to heal. Yet afterwards, many told me it was normal, all that mattered was that my baby was here safely and that I would get over it. It was deemed a normal day in the birth world, leaving me to question where I had gone wrong and why I had failed.

“I do not regret the decisions I took and I feel our experience was overwhelmingly positive”

A different perspective

I find it interesting that other people feel able to decide for me which of my birth experiences were traumatic and which were not. For me, my first birth experience where I felt powerless, out of control - like I had no bodily autonomy and as though I had failed - was the  birth I would describe as traumatic, yet still some people argue that this is not the case.

Maybe this rings true in the unsolicited advice I experienced before my first birth experience such as, ‘be prepared to have no dignity left’ and ‘you’ve no idea what it’s like until you’re in it so just do what they say’. Others seem to view my third birth and the fact it didn’t follow the plan perfectly as the one which should have left me traumatised, yet I feel that I was empowered to make my own decisions, was in control of the eventssurrounding my care, had autonomy over what happened to my body and felt I had achieved my home birth.

Therefore, I personally do not feel traumatised by the unplanned aspects of my birth experience, proving how important it is to remember that trauma really is in the eye of the beholder. 

“…my first birth experience where I felt powerless…was the birth I would describe as traumatic, yet still some people argue that this is not the case”